Biden is favored to win the election

Updated 37 minutes ago
Hey there! I’m Fivey Fox, and I’m here to show you around. Each of these maps is an example of how things might shake out on Election Day.

Latest news

Oct. 9, 2020

The second presidential debate, originally scheduled for Oct. 15, is now postponed to Oct. 22 because of President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, but that hasn’t stopped him from floating the possibility of hosting a rally this weekend. We’ve started to get polls on what the public thinks of Trump’s diagnosis, and so far Americans, including some Republicans, say Trump didn’t take enough precautions. There are also signs that the episode may be hurting Trump’s reelection chances. Now, not every pollster has shown an uptick for Biden since we learned about Trump’s diagnosis last Friday, but Biden still got some of his best polls this week. We’ll continue to monitor polls for evidence of how Trump’s diagnosis has affected both the election and Americans’ views of the coronavirus.

  • The voting has already started in the 2020 election, but there’s a real possibility that come Election Day we won’t know who won the presidency right away. Depending on how things unfold, there are a variety of nightmare scenarios where the election is contested. As FiveThirtyEight’s Clare Malone writes, this has, of course, happened before, with the 2000 presidential election as the most recent example, but there’s reason to believe that if it happens again this year, it would be much worse for our democracy than the 2000 case was.
  • On Wednesday, we launched our House forecast, the last election forecast we’re launching this year. The outlook is particularly good for Democrats. All three versions of our forecast more or less agree that Democrats will maintain control of the House — and maybe even pick up a few seats.

2020 Election Coverage

To put all these numbers in context, check out our coverage and subscribe to the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast!

Biden is favored to win the election

We simulate the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often. The sample of 100 outcomes below gives you a good idea of the range of scenarios our model thinks is possible.

Trump wins 14 in 100 Biden wins 85 in 100
Don’t count the underdog out! Upset wins are surprising but not impossible.

Every outcome in our simulations

All possible Electoral College outcomes for each candidate, with higher bars showing outcomes that appeared more often in our 40,000 simulations

Electoral college vote distribution for Trump, who wins in 14.3% of simulated outcomes.
Electoral college vote distribution for Biden, who wins in 85.3% of simulated outcomes.
More bars to the right of the 270 line means more simulations where that candidate wins. Some of the bars represent really weird outcomes, but you never know!

The winding path to victory

States that are forecasted to vote for one candidate by a big margin are at the ends of the path, while tighter races are in the middle. Bigger segments mean more Electoral College votes. Trace the path from either end to see which state could put one candidate over the top.

Maine and Nebraska’s congressional districts are shown separately because those states split their Electoral College votes, allotting some to the statewide winner and some to the winner of each district.
We call this the 🐍 snake 🐍 chart! This makes it easy to see why some states are hotly contested and others mostly get ignored.

How the forecast has changed

The forecast updates at least once a day and whenever we get a new poll. Click the buttons to see the ways each candidate’s outlook has changed over time.

As the election gets closer — and as we get swamped with new polls 😬 — the forecast will get less uncertain.

Weird and not-so-weird possibilities

The chances that these situations will crop up

Who’s ahead in national polls?

Our model relies mainly on state polls, which it combines with demographic, economic and other data to forecast what will happen on Election Day. If you want to see a snapshot of what voters are thinking right now — with no fancy modeling — check out the national polls.

Want more stuff like this? See how the race is shaping up in individual states, or watch our Election Updates on YouTube.
Congrats, you made it to the bottom! If you’re looking for the nitty-gritty of how our forecast works, check out the methodology.

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